LETTERS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS. 3 



artes translated owt of Latine and other toonges into En- 

 glysshe. And it is not unknowen unto your Honour that 

 the Latins receaving bothe the science of philosophic and 

 phisike of the Grekes, do still for the most parte in all ther 

 translacions use the Greke names, insomuche that, for the 

 better underston ding of them, one Otto Brumfelsius, a learned 

 man, hathe writen a large booke intiteled, Onomasficon Medi- 

 cine, where he hathe these woordes, Res ipsas atque artium 

 vocabula, scite, apposite, designateque efferre, atque ad Poly- 

 cleti regulam (quod aiunt) exprimere, res est non minus difficilis 

 quam gloriosa. Quo, nullum studii genus majori constat mo- 

 lestia. Id quod in causa esse reor, quia hodie tarn pauci in ea 

 palestra sese exerceant, fyc. Agen, it is not unknowen unto 

 your honour that ons all toonges were barbarous and needie, 

 before the knowleage of things browght in plentie of woordes 

 and names ; wherby it maye well appease that men, in the 

 first age of the worlde 5 had a shorte language consistinge of 

 fewe woordes, which ever after increased by the knowleage 

 and invention of thinges. Exercise also maketh suche 

 woordes familier, which at the first were diificulte to be un- 

 derstode ; for children at the first (as saithe Aristotle) caule 

 all men fathers : but shortely after by exercise caule them by 

 there names. And I have learned by experience that the mary- 

 ners use manye Englysse woordes, which were as unknowen 

 unto me as the Chaldean toonge before I was conversant with 

 them. It maye therefore suffice that the woordes and termes 

 of artes and sciences be knowen to the professours therof. as 

 partely by experience and partely by the helpe of dictionaries 

 describing them per proprium genus et differentiam, as the 

 logitians teache, and as Georgius Agricola useth to do in the 

 Germayne toonge, which, as well in that parte of philosophic 

 as in all other, was barbarous and indigent before it was by 

 longe experience browght to perfection. But not to trouble 

 your honour any longer with this matter, one thinge re- 

 mayneth wherof I w r olde gladlye have certified your honour 

 at my last being at the courte at Grenewich, if I might have 

 had convenient accesse unto yow; And this is, that, per- 

 ceavinge your honour to take pleasure in the wonderfull 

 woorkes of arte and nature (wherin doubtlesse shyneth the 

 sparke of the divine spirite that God hathe gyven you) I was 

 then mynded to have delyvered unto your honour this phi- 

 losophicall booke, wherin is described (as appeareth in folio 

 ij.) so excellent and precious an experiment, wrought by arte 

 to the similitude of the universall frame of the worlde, made 

 by the omnipotent and greate God of nature, that I beleve 

 the like w r as never doonne synse the creacion of the worlde. 



